Clearly WD have a huge problem with external USB drives on WIN10. All the comments on this site about loading this and doing that I have never seen so much running round an issue that WD need to fix and now. One that works !!! I have downloaded the firmware update and still no change. Sometimes WIN10 recognises the drive most times it does not and this on two very different machines one a brand new Lenovo another a top end gamer ASUS box.
Since the issue is happening in two different computers I am inclined to believe the hard drive is not healthy. Run a test using WDDLG. It if fails any test it should be replaced.
https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=940
https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=1164
If the unit is healthy (It it passes all three tests) then try replacing the USB cable with a shorter one.
Hi @kenwgreen - What firmware update did you download? There is no update for the WD Elements.
Hi, the WD support site https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=262 to which WD directs you.
The upgrade to the drive is supposed to be applicable to WD Elements per the list of supported drives and is contrary to the download site which lists WIN XP as the most current OS. I agree very confusing and the reason for the Urgggg so any suggestions as to how to fix my problem.
FYI the drive is less than a week old straight out of the pack
I have a 1TB drive which is not listed, ??
I’ll look into this further tomorrow and verify the list is accurate. My apologies for any confusion. Thanks for the heads up. It’s possible they snuck an update past us - the software is not listed under the WD Elements on our main support page, so one of them has to be incorrect. Incidentally, WinDLG IS listed there…
OK so I have downloaded lifeguard and run it without success. So I unplugged and re-plugged into several times in one of the five different USB 3.0 port and finallyiiii it came up or I should say was recognised without an error by WIN10. I have run lifeguard twice with the same result it even checked out my other Seagate drives, oh bite my tongue, all came up with ticks 100% AOK. Just for fun I changed over to my gamer platform with similar no recognition antics until it was accepted and then ran lifeguard, same great AOK 100% result.
Well I did only buy this device last weekend so I am off to return it tomorrow and I hope get my money back or another and I mean another device.
The saga goes on, I was scanning My Passport on my work laptop for a firmware upgrade and behold plugged it in, WIN10 again, unrecognised drive but this time with a difference. WIN10 offered to scan the drive or continue without issue, I chose the later and no issue accessing anything on the drive. Unfortunately WD firmware updater does not recognise the drive, Urrrrggg, what is going on with WIN10, I have never had such issues with these drives on any machine??
Is there a recent WIN10 update that does not work too well with WD drivers which MS loads from it’s library ? I have noticed in all instances the driver is very dated it is as old as 2013.
It appears I was in error here. We confirmed that there is indeed an update - we will work to get our pages updated as quickly as possible.
So we are talking about a Passport now? Different drive? Same data cable maybe?
I know there is no issue with Windows 10 reading either WD Elements or the Passport.
Tks for the follow up, so I assume ‘we will work to update,’ means remove the inclusion of WD Elements from the list of supported drives or provide a firmware update for WD Elements that will run on WIN10 ??
Yep I wanted to see just how far the issue extends hence my comment and no quite separate data cable. The WD Elements has it’s own hardware and was attached to PC/Laptops in a home environment. The My Passport drive is in a work place environment quite separate for security reasons.
The scan completed in 45mins no errors the drive now connects with no further alerts from WIN10, still not sure what has/was fixed because there was never a problem until I tried to update the device firmware as advised by this site was necessary for Wireless drives…
We will update our downloads page to include the universal firmware updater for this drive. I don’t know if there is an actual update for your specific model, but if it told you there is one than you should be good to go there.
As I’ve mentioned a few times now there is no compatibility issue between our drives and Windows 10.
Wireless drives? Neither of those products are wireless, unless you are referring to the My Passport Wireless as the second product?
OK tks again I only have one WD Elements I am not familiar with WD products to suspect there are different models so I take your word like I did the salesman when he said it would be fine on WIN10.
My Passport is a wireless drive and here again is the reference to the WD WEB site advising to update the firmware…
Again tks for your patience unfortunately I still have the issue now not only with a new WD Element on several machines but having updated the MY Passport (Wireless) firmware it also now as I said, is not always recognised on my corporate WIN10 laptop.
Happy to show WD the issue if you want to send someone round but hey that’s probably stretching it because there isn’t a WIN10 problem, because GR8 Scott said there wasn’t like there was a firmware update advertised for WD elements.
